From KFC to chicken tikka masala, people everywhere eat chicken. It's versatile, relatively inexpensive compared to other meats, and has no major religious restrictions. But chicken for dinner wasn't always this popular.

How did the chicken achieve such cultural and culinary dominance? It is all the more surprising in light of the belief by many archaeologists that chickens were first domesticated not for eating but for cockfighting. Until the advent of large-scale industrial production in the 20th century, the economic and nutritional contribution of chickens was modest. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond listed chickens among the “small domestic mammals and domestic birds and insects” that have been useful to humanity but unlike the horse or the ox did little—outside of legends—to change the course of history. Nonetheless, the chicken has inspired contributions to culture, art, cuisine, science and religion over the millennia.

Smithsonian has more than you ever thought you needed to know about chickens: their origins, history, cultural significance, and rise as a popular food item. Link -via mental_floss

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Sometimes a trip to the veterinarian is necessary, but this poor kitty doesn't want it. At least that's what he says! -via Arbroath

Jill Mills made a cake that has an ice cave on top, in which a Wampa is holding Luke Skywalker! Luckily, Han Solo is riding nearby. The cake was for her 6-year-old son's Star Wars-themed birthday party. The cave was made with pretzel sticks and white chocolate constructed atop the cake. See more pictures and the story of how it was done at her website Kitchen Fun with My Three Sons. Link

The fossil remains of a 60-million-year-old turtle called Carbonemys cofrinii was found in 2005 in Colombia, and just now introduced to the public after years of study by the paleontologists from North Carolina State University who found it. The shell of this turtle is more than five and a half feet long! Carbonemys had jaws strong enough to eat almost anything, including crocodiles. Read more about this discovery at NC State. Link -via the Presurfer

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The annual Star Wars weekend at Walt Disney World has come and gone is running every weekend through June 10th. This year, Chewbacca really got down to LMFAO. -via The Daily What Geek

If you like this, wait until you see the grand finale, a medley of pop songs featuring more LMFAO and as many Star Wars characters as can fit on a stage.

Migrating elephants are just doing their thing, but cause damage to farms and fences, and run into trouble on highways. But an underpass beneath Nanyuki-Meru road in northern Kenya, built just for the elephants, allows herds to pass through the area with ease. It was completed in 2010, and hundreds of elephants have been seen using the corridor. The underpass is part of a long-term project to restore traditional migration routes. Read about it and see more pictures at National Geographic News. Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!

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Alexandra Nguyen, Angela Nguyen, Angelica Nguyen, Elizabeth Nguyen, Emily Nguyen, Isabella Nguyen, Madeline Nguyen, and Vi Nguyen all attend Presentation High, a Catholic girls school in San Jose, California. They shared a single quote in their high school yearbook, which we posted last week. The photo of the yearbook page has brought the octet global recognition. And yes, Angela and Madeline are twins.

A photo of the page registered more than 1.1 million views on image-sharing site Imgur. A blog item on the Huffington Post wondered if it might be the best yearbook quote ever. The United Kingdom's Daily Mail posted an item about the stunt. And a camera crew from "Inside Edition" came to the school Friday to interview them. (Full disclosure: I first heard about it from my wife, who works at the school.)

Isabella Nguyen said they first thought about using a famous quote but decided to make light of the fact that people have often asked the girls -- who have shared classes for four years -- if they're related. "People always ask if we're cousins or something," she said.

Nguyen is a common surname in Vietnam and is pretty common in the Bay Area, which has a large Vietnamese population.

The yearbook quote was Isabella Nguyen's idea. Link -via Gawker

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It's a nice fantasy, at least! This Twaggie was illustrated by Joy and Noelle of Twins Are Weird, from a Tweet by @GuyEndoreKaiser. See a new Tweet illustrated every day at Twaggies! Link

If you have anything to do with young people or children, you've probably noticed the trends in names changing as the years go by. But can you name the top ten names chosen for baby boys in 2011? In today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental floss, you are asked to do just that ...in three minutes! I failed terribly, but I'll give you a hint: the names aren't all that weird. Link

Update: And the other shoe drops! You can also try the top ten girl's names. Link

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Right, you're not supposed to look at a solar eclipse -or look at the sun anytime, really. But as Mark Day looked away from the eclipse, he caught the weird shadows that are thrown by a crescent sun! If you want to look at the eclipse, you can do so safely in a video at Geeks Are Sexy, posted along with this one. Link

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The song "One Day" by Matisyahu is inspirational already, and even more so when a 5th grade class in Kansas sings it together with all their hearts. -via Geekosystem

This mass-transit railway was a propeller-driven train suspended beneath a monorail in Glasgow, Scotland. The test track for the Bennie Railplane was built in the 1930s, but the system was never implemented wider because of the economic difficulties of the time. See more pictures at Dark Roasted Blend. Link -via the Presurfer

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This video by skater Joe Pease stars only his shadow. The title is a reference to Peter Pan. -via Buzzfeed

As much chaos and grief as Adolph Hitler gave Europe, his aspirations were much, much worse. Luckily, not all those plans turn out the way he wanted. Some were never implemented, for god reason. And others, like the V-weapons program, did not live up to the specifications.

It's hard to read about the V-weapons program without picturing an Aryan version of Wile E. Coyote engineering the whole thing behind the scenes. Especially when rockets routinely failed for such hilarious reasons as "too steep," "fell on airport" and "steam generator misbehaved." According to one disgruntled engineer whose V-2 exploded only three seconds after ignition, "We just blew a million marks in order to guess what could have been reported accurately by an instrument probably worth the price of a small motorcycle."

Of the nearly 6,000 V-2 rockets constructed, only 3,170 were actually launched. Of the 1,403 lobbed at England, nearly 300 somehow missed. And we mean they missed England, a 50,000-square-mile target. The V-2s aimed at London fared no better, with only 517 hits out of 1,359 attempts. It seems like you could consistently do better with huge, cartoonish catapults.

The plans that were abandoned were even more ridiculous. Read about them all at Cracked. Link

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Yeah, that's a clever dog! However, I have a cat that turns on the laundry room light just for the fun of it, because she likes playing with the dangling chain. But whatever possessed this guy to store sock puppets on his ceiling fan blades? Was it specifically to train the dog to turn the fan on? I bet he has the cleanest fan blades in town! -via Arbroath